During a heart-breaking bike ride through SoHo, Etan Patz’s father couldn't stop himself from glancing over at the site where police believe his six-year-old son was murdered 33 years ago.

It came on the same day police were forced to admit they may never find the missing boy's body, thus never giving his family a chance to properly bury his body.

Pedro Hernandez, from New Jersey, confessed last week to strangling the boy in the basement, stashing it in the freezer of the shop he worked in and later disposing of it in nearby Thompson Street.

Sad journey: Etan Patz's father Stan cycles past the alleged murder site on West Broadway, SoHo, and couldn't help but glance over to the bodega where Etan was believed to have been strangled

Haunting journey: If Pedro Hernandez is to be believed, then the Patz family will have to live mere feet away from where their son was strangled and stored in a freezer

Fed up: The sign Stan Patz put up for 'media people' yesterday, left, and putting on his helmet as he prepares to cycle past the spot where his son was allegedly killed

A solemn-faced Stan Patz mounted his
bike outside his home on Prince Street yesterday, the same home the
couple have lived in since their son disappeared on May 25, 1979.

As he cycled down the street and rode past the glasses shop that now occupies 448 West Broadway, the heart-broken father could not help but steal a glance over at the doorway where just three days before sympathy flowers and teddy bears lay in his son's honor.

If Pedro Hernandez's claims are true, then the Patzs will never be able to get away from the horrible memories of their son's disappearance and the feeling that his murder took place mere blocks away from their home.

RELATED ARTICLES

Share this article

Share

According to the New York Post, the city's Sanitation Department is trying to find out if the trash at the Thomspon Street address was removed that night by the city or a private hauler - which means they could be planning on a wide-scale search for his remains at a landfill site.

However a law-enforcement source yesterday said that authorities 'are never
going to undertake that kind of searching as It would cost millions of dollars'.

The source told the paper: 'You’re talking about hundreds of tons of garbage. You’d probably still never find that body.'

Killer? Pedro Hernandez, right, confessed to strangling Etan and hiding his body in a freezer when he was 18

Route: The map shows the path Etan would have
walked after leaving his SoHo home for the bus stop - and its proximity
to the bodega where Hernandez worked

Remembered: A makeshift memorial is placed outside the premises where Etan allegedly disappeared

A retired sanitation worker told the paper that in the late seventies when Etan went missing, the department usually dumped trash in the Atlantic Ocean and took it to an incinerator, meaning there would definitely be no remains.

Without a body or DNA evidence, the DA will not be able to prosecute Hernandez on his confession alone.

Meanwhile, Stan and Julie Patz are said to be skeptical of the confession, according to DNAInfo, as it is just the latest in a string of stories they have heard from various sources and people over the last 33 years.

As well as a number of false claims and wrong leads given to police - including the recent questioning of handyman Othniel Miller, the family have also had a number of young men come to the family home claiming to be Etan.

Sources told DNAinfo that one man actually walked up to Stan Patz and said, 'Hi dad, I am Etan.'

Another was so sure and insistent he was the missing boy from the milk cartons that he had to submit a DNA test to prove he was not him.

It is believed he had even convinced himself he was Etan after becoming obsessed with the infamous case over the years.

The sister of Etan Patz's confessed killer said today that police ignored her pleas to investigate Pedro Hernandez for years.

Norma
Hernandez says she told police in Camden, New Jersey in the early 1980s
that her brother had admitted to members of his church that he killed a
boy in New York City in 1979.

'I went down to the police station and told them that my brother had killed and strangled a little boy,' Norma Hernandez told ABC News.

Trace: Stan Patz rode his bike past the site where his six-year-old son was allegedly murdered as law enforcement sources admitted its likely cops will never find his child's body

'Killer': Hernandez, who was 18 in 1979, worked in a corner shop blocks from Etan's home

Search: On Thursday, April 19, investigators
began searching a basement near the Patz's apartment for human remains
of the boy who advocated the missing children's movement in America

New lead: Up until recently, Jose Ramos, right, was the only suspect in the case but the police's questioning of Othniel Miller, left, led them to excavate a basement he used to own. Ramos worked for Miller in 1979

'They never got back to me...I thought I'd at least hear back from a detective but nothing.'

She also told the New York Post that her brother returned to work at the bodega where he allegedly murdered Patz several years after the incident took place.

Norma Hernandez told how her brother quit his job as a stockboy and moved to New Jersey shortly after the six-year-old vanished in March 1979.

But after divorcing his first wife, Hernandez returned to Manhattan and resumed working at the bodega.

Claims regarding the boy's disappearance are particularly rife around the anniversary of his disappearance, as was Hernandez's confession last week.

The Patz family have never been able to escape the publicity surrounding their youngest son's disappearance and have been particularly hounded in the weeks since the FBI dug up a SoHo basement believing they were going to find traces of the child's body.

Yesterday, Mr Patz pinned a note to their door saying: 'To all the media people hanging around here. You have managed to make a difficult situation even worse. Talk to your assignment editors.

'It is past time for you to leave me, my family and my neighbors alone.'

Stanley Patz has always maintained that convicted pedophile Jose Ramos is responsible for his son's death.

Search: NYPD and FBI investigators equipped with
jackhammers and pickaxes entered a concrete-floored basement underneath
Lucky Jeans on Prince Street in the SoHo section of New York in April

Tip off: The SoHo building the FBI searched was along the path where the blond-haired boy disappeared

In 2004 Ramos,who dated Etan’s babysitter, was declared responsible for
their son's death by a civil judge. Stan Patz has been so convinced of
Ramos’ guilt that every year, on Etan's birthday and on the anniversary
of his disappearance, Patz sends Ramos a Missing Child poster of his
son.

On the back he writes, 'What did you do to my little boy?'

The FBI are also said to be skeptical that they have their man and Manhattan DA Cy Vance has expressed doubts over the bipolar schizophrenic's confession.

Hernandez, who was 18 at the time and working in a bodega just a few blocks away from Etan's home, has been charged with second-degree murder and has pleaded not guilty.

He claims to have lured the youngster to the store with the promise of soda.

A law enforcement source told the New York Post that during his three-and-a-half hour confession Hernandez admitted he then strangled Etan before storing his body in a walk-in freezer in the basement.

He said he put the boy's body in a plastic bag and a box, then disposed of it on Thompson Street, just one-and-a-half blocks from the bodega.

Hernandez, who is reportedly schizophrenic and bipolar, is currently on suicide watch at New York's Bellevue Hospital.

There is no physical evidence that Hernandez committed the crime and the only thing police are going on is his confession to police, a prayer group and relatives.

Hernandez’s sister, Norma, told The Wall Street Journal yesterday that after hearing from other relatives about his alleged confession, she went to the Camden, New Jersey, police.